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When the structural basics are done well, you'll find that you increase your search rating (Search Engine Optimization or SEO), convert sales, create a positive client dialogue and win their word-of-mouth, increasingly known as “social media. When your ”Benefits” are succinctly and creatively portrayed, they become self-replicating and the basis of win-win.
Squeezing copious amounts of content onto your landing page is obviously daunting, yet we see it all the time. The simple solution is distributing your content into fertile oases along a well-marked path. It is only common sense that once someone becomes interested (the hook) they will look for and actually read your content, providing of course you make navigating easy. After all your customers are looking for information, just not all at once... Please!
Picture the example of viewing a newspaper from afar. If all the text were the same size, it’s an incomprehensible gray mass of information. Contrast (the oasis) is necessary to make any sense of it. It’s no different with your website. Then too from a larger perspective when doing a search for a product or service you’ll find website after website that say pretty much the same thing, many with tons of text to wade through. Blah-blah-blah. Now not only is each website rather gray, they all become gray in contrast to one another.
If you’re looking for the one right way, there is none. Each project is unique and demands it’s own unique solutions. Were there one right way, we’d be right back to the “same” dilemma. However, if you get a hint of the Blah-Blah-Blahs’ of gray mass, that’s a big clue that things aren’t working. A website that works is a good website period. A better website is one that works better. So, even a good website is not static and can always be improved on.
You achieve "better" through testing. There are many tools to test your site so improvements can be made with intelligent real-world statistics. It might be something simple: a color change, another image or a sentence or two. Conducting some simple testing can reveal better results based on real data to support the change.
Everything written here is simple common sense and certainly nothing eureka new. There are many resources for creating a website that works. For those that are curious, see the USEFUL LINKS.
Those precious few seconds.
So many websites you see suffer from priority, organizational and structural problems, even those created by experienced upscale website designers. Many designers often don’t fully grasp or execute the critical first priority of revealing your all-important benefits to your audience with instant clarity and focus. These issues conspire to create a negative first impression and at the very least make your website difficult to coherently navigate.
With so much riding on your first impression created in precious few seconds, your business cannot afford to have potential customers sweep away feeling frustrated or worse. Consumers are sometimes fickle, but they are more often just fed up.
Many designers are more concerned with winning beauty awards than in your business success. Obviously we are all attracted to beauty, but draped over a vapid, badly written, poorly organized structure, you won’t win the bookmarks, attention and customers you work so hard for. Attractive is “Attractive,” however the greater gravity is created by: ”Say what you mean and mean what you say.” Your website might have that same simple clarity and intention. Great design is fresh air and illumination to form/function; never self-serving.
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